October 31, 2010

I hope you don't mind me e-mailing in, like this. I have been reading your web site and articles and I think they are excellent.

I may or may not be in a situation like the people in the articles. I may not be an abused woman. My problem is that I am a very selfish, self-centered person and I have ruined my husband's life by being selfish and having no empathy towards him or anyone else. He is always very angry with me on this account and he even says I have a personality disorder, which I have heard is incurable.

I even feel selfish writing this, but we have three children who might be affected by my behavior and I'd like to know how to minimise the effects of it and how to be empathetic. I try so hard never to think of myself and to monitor everything I say, do, feel and think in case it's horrible (the word he used was narcissism) but it is only effective up to a point.

Do you have any advice for this situation?

Yours in hope

Allie

Dear Allie,

Yes, I do have advice for you. That advice is to stop listening to your husband right away.

Your husband tells you that you are selfish, self-centred, and you have ruined your his life.

October 19, 2010

You want a wonderful relationship, but do you know what you need to do to create it? These 10 tips will give priceless pointers to what works, what doesn’t, and how to create a great relationship right from the get go - or what went wrong from Day 1 to create the relationship you are in today.

1. The things you sweep under the carpet will, one day, destroy the carpet.

It’s very easy, at the start of a relationship, to overlook the things that don’t sit well with you. Maybe you think the two of you will be able to ‘thrash them out’ together, at a later date. Maybe you think that love, like a bath of acid will dissolve those gritty little problems – and those gritty, not-so-little problems, also. That is wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is the highway to unhappiness.

2. ‘Chemistry’ usually has a short shelf-life. Chemistry, generally, means that another person’s teeth fit your wounds. Or, if you prefer, ‘chemistry’ describes the powerful attraction and connection you feel for someone who offers you the opportunity to replay a psycho-drama from childhood. Not that you will be aware of that consciously. But over time, you will find yourself clamouring for their love and attention, in the same way that you once clamoured for a parent’s attention or love.

3. First impressions are last impressions. Your conscious mind might be fooled by nice manners, good dress sense, and physical attractiveness. Your intuition is not. What your intuition tells you in a split second, your rational mind will take months - or even years - to fully grasp. If your intuition whispered to you: “Back off! This person is bad news”, expect a number of painful months, or years, while your rational brain gets up to speed.

4. What you believe is what you receive. Most partners will only ever treat you as well as you believe you deserve to be treated. The crucial word here is “believe” - not “hope”, or “desire”. If, at bottom, you don’t really believe you deserve the best, it’s highly unlikely that you will get it.

5. You don’t just get a partner; you get the family baggage thrown in. You fall in love with one individual, but you can expect to get saddled with their unresolved family baggage. If partners like their own parents, that’s a plus. If they don’t, and want little or nothing to do with them, what that means is they have yet to break free of their parents, emotionally. A partner laden with family baggage is likely to end up treating you like their burdensome family.

6. Notice how prospective partners treat people they don’t like – that could be you one day. An accurate measure of how nice your partner is, is not how nice he is to you at the start of the relationship – that’s a forgone conclusion; he’s on his best behaviour, out to make a good impression. Much more important is the way he treats, and talks about, people he doesn’t feel obliged to please. Anger, resentment, and criticism of other people does not bode well. One day you may well be ‘other people’.

7. Love means both partners being able to say they are sorry… in a way that makes the other feel genuinely valued. Genuine love presupposes genuine regret at upsetting a loved one. A partner who can’t, or won’t, apologise for causing distress is disregarding your feelings. His disregard for your feelings will cause you lot of unnecessary pain and frustration, over the life of the relationship.

8. All assumptions are deceptive - except, possibly, this one. Assumptions are no substitute for information. We tend to make assumptions in line with our hopes, or fears. The best way to know find out what is really the case for another person is to ask, in a calm, relaxed manner, right from the start.

9. No relationship will thrive without effective communication, physical affection, mutual care and support, and selflessness. Settling for crumbs of what you want is like being on a long-term starvation diet. The relationship will get thinner and thinner. At best it will have a long, feeble half-life. At worst, it will die of starvation.

10. Appreciation is the most powerful form of positive communication. (Blame and criticism are, doubtless, the most powerful forms of destructive communication. If you have experienced them in an abusive relationship, you will want to steer clear of them in the future.) Human beings thrive on genuine appreciation. We all want to receive it, yet most of us are not very good at giving it. Expressing appreciation for your near and dear ones, daily, is a skill well worth learning – not least, because the more you give, the more you get. I’m guessing you, also, enjoy being appreciated as much as the next person. Why wouldn’t you?

October 18, 2010

“If we are used to being nice, why do you think it is so easy to change? I have subscribed to your emails and was watching your video today and this thought popped into my head: it is just plain hard to be mean to people we care for, including an abusive (ex-)partner, if we are not abusive. Either I have to be Miss Mega Bitch or Miss Get Run Over. There seems to be no happy medium.” Louise

Here's the thing, Louise: you've spent your time being nice to - that is doing back flips to please - a man who treats you badly –and, all the while, treating yourself badly, when you could get to treat yourself well.

So, it's never about changing away from being nice. It's all about loving yourself first, and not casting pearls before swine. Pigs can eat anything, after all. But that really doesn't mean that each time you make a beautiful meal you should chuck it into the pigsty. Pigs are very happy - as I understand it - with leftover table scraps, or swill.

But how can you ever expect someone to cherish you, if you are not prepared to do that for yourself?

How can you educate someone to treat you well, if you do not teach them how, by doing it for yourself?

Start giving your very best to yourself. Who deserves your best more than you do, after all? And extend that best only to those people who deserve it.

It’s not unusual for clients to tell me what they should do, or what they need to do.

And we’re not just talking about goal setting here.

Abused women often tell me that they have to stop waiting for an abusive partner to change. Or they should take better care of themselves. Or they need to believe they deserve a better life.

What's happened to make them come up with all this 'should' and 'have to' and 'need to' stuff?

What they don't know is, they've been brainwashed by the "Misery Trilogy"!

“I need to start feeling better about myself” isn’t a very compelling statement, is it?

It’s actually code for: “I've been stuck in an abusive relationship, and I feel really bad about myself. It’s making me thoroughly miserable. I know that needs to (notice: “needs to” again) change, for things to get better, and I haven’t a clue how to do it. Other people tell me I need to do it. I know they’re right; and I know they know how to do it, but damned if I do. I’m worried there must be something terribly wrong with me.”

“Should” means much the same thing. We use should to express an expectation we are all too well aware of; an expectation that makes us thoroughly miserable – because we can’t live up to it.

And how about “have to”: “I have to stop thinking about my abusive partner and get my life back on track”? How convincing does that sound?

“Should”, “need to” and “have to” (aka the Misery Trilogy) must be three of the most effective little words you can use for making yourself feel worse than you already do.

In fact, “should”, “need” and “have to” are the verbal salt you rub into the running sores of the emotional abuse you’ve suffered.

If you could do better than you are doing, there is no way you would allow yourself to be overwhelmed and paralysed by unhappiness.

So, what can you do, when you can’t do very much?

You can always do something.

You may have your eyes on the big prize that, for today, is out of reach: i.e. today I’ll do my Gloria Gaynor routine, and when I sing “Go on now, GO”, he’ll disappear with his tail between his legs, never to darken my door again.”

For today, that may be too much of a stretch.

Still, there is always something you can do.

You can listen to Gloria Gaynor and – not fantasize but – visualize your Gloria Gaynor moment.

Fantasy is one thing. It may not get you very far.

Visualization is another thing, entirely. It’s a very, very powerful tool to retrain your mind and change your belief system.

What if you made one small change in the words you say to yourself, today and every day?

Could you do that?

It’s not much to ask.

Particularly since it will bring you massive benefits.

What if, instead of rubbing verbal salt in your wounds, you applied a little balm?

What would happen if instead of saying:

“I need to start feeling better about myself”…

You said:

“From today, I get to feel better about myself”.

That’s all there is to it.

Every time you catch yourself slipping into the Misery Trilogy of “should”, “need to”, and “have to”, you simply replace the Misery words with this simple formula:

“Today, I get to…”

It puts you back in control.

So you could say: “Today I get to tell my abusive partner: I’d rather spend time with a Box Jellyfish than with you… or not” - because there may be very good reasons for not saying that to him, just then. But there are no good reasons for not feeling free to entertain that possibility.

Today can be the day that you get to replace your feelings of paralysis with new vistas of possibilities.

Today, I know I’ll get to square up to one or two challenges in my life.

October 13, 2010

As you know he can't have an argument by himself. So, what I have done in my actions that may have set the course for some of the abuse. There are always two sides to the story. Or does he just get blamed for everything?

Susie

Simple, Susie.

Just suppose that you are an irritating, ditzy person - now I'm guessing you're not, otherwise you would not be wanting to hold yourself accountable for your part in what happens in your relationship.

Here's the thing: he is responsible for his behaviour.

So even if you were annoying, and silly, if he is threatening, and aggressive, and hurtful, that is his responsibility. Not yours.

Now, I'm guessing he has behaved pretty badly towards you - otherwise you would not have ended up at my website.

I'm not going to excuse that bad behaviour, and I would suggest that you don't either... any more.

Warm wishes,

Annie

PS Actually, long experience of abusive men tells me that they are remarkably good at having arguments all by themselves: when they are in the mood to 'blow', they 'blow'. It's called finding a trigger, and exploding. Of course, by that time, they've often said so many hurtful things to you that you rise to the bait... So, then, you wonder how much of the fight is your fault.

P.S. This report lifts the lid on some key things that most men really DON’T want you to hear, and most women don’t want to admit to themselves. I won’t leave it up for long, so download it now while you still can!

They resonate with us, because of the grain of truth in them. Of which, more in a moment.

The trouble is, as children, we get to decide which bit we like the best; which bit really does it for us.

No prizes for guessing which bit that is…

It’s the happy ending, isn’t it?

Who could blame you for tuning in to the Feel Good Factor?

It’s normal. We all want more good feelings in our life.

Why wouldn’t you?

But is that really the grain of truth?

Think about it for a moment:

“Prince falls in love with self-effacing workhorse and lives happily with her forever after.” (Cinderella)

“Driven away by a wicked stepmother, low maintenance beauty keeps house, uncomplainingly, for 7 small men, until necrophiliac Prince happens along, kisses her and brings her back to life.” (Snow White)

“Love of a beautiful young woman saves father, and transforms misanthropic Beast into a Prince” (Beauty and the Beast)

(Should we reallybe filling our children’s head with this stuff??!)

Catherine Behan, Law of Attraction Life Coach, has a very different take on it. She focuses on the grain of truth within the fairy tale.

She focuses on the beliefs and behaviours we learn from fairy tale.

In fact, Catherine Behan has discovered that most women conform to 1 of 3 stereotypes: two fairy tale princesses, and another, even more unlikel y figure.

You’ll be amazed when you find out who this is.

Catherine Behan has a lot of great things to say about relationships, including her own.

What’s more, she’s been generous enough to share what she knows, absolutely free.

October 03, 2010

“Annie, what if there is cause to suspect that my emotionally abusive husband could be gay? Then what?”

That’s a question I was asked this week.

And it is a question best answered with a question:

“Suppose he is gay, what difference does that really make?”

He’s still behaved towards you in an emotionally abusive way.

He’s still a damaging partner.

If he is gay, then his sexuality is not what he led you to believe it was – and he showed even less care and concern than you had previously thought, by marrying you.

Being gay provides no excuse, nor justification for his treatment of you. Period.

Abusive men really do NOT like women.

Gay men may – or may not – like women. But their preferred sexual partners are men.

My questioner did not suggest that her husband might have other sexual partners. Had she done so, then the concerns she would have to face would be the same as those of a woman with a heterosexual, adulterous husband. In both instances, the question would be: is he having unprotected sex with other people?

Do you choose to feel more, or less, humiliated if your – unloving, adulterous – partner is homosexual, rather than heterosexual?

That is entirely up to you.

The sexuality of abusive men is perverted. They use – or withhold - sex for control, not love. They ‘relate’ to their partner in a damaging way.

That is a feature of the breed.

I am very happy to generalize about abusive men; because they are, ultimately, eerily like clones. They all share the same loathing for women. They all abuse their partners in very similar ways.

I am certainly, no expert as regards homosexuality, but I know that the same does not hold true of gay men.

What should my questioner do?

Please note that she is not even asking what she should do. Possibly because she still doesn’t feel ready to do anything about a relationship that is making her thoroughly miserable.

I believe she should make it clear to her husband that she is not prepared to tolerate emotionally abusive behavior. But, then, I believe that is the thing all abused women should do.

She should also make it clear exactly where she stands as regards extra-marital affairs.

His sexuality may, or may not, be an issue. What if he were actually bi-sexual?